Past Labs

 

Over 16 seasons, The Directors Lab North (DLN) has been a unique site of development for Canadian Directors; those who have participated in the Lab have gone on to intrinsically shape the Canadian Theatre landscape.

 

Now, entering its 17th year, the DLN attracts emerging, mid-level, and established career directors from around the world, fostering an environment in which local and international connections are forged between directors who come to the ‘Lab’ to hone their craft.

 

 In this historical moment, we believe that it is crucial that the Directors Lab North, its history, its development and its significant impact on Canadian Theatre-making are appropriately archived and disseminated as a significant “chapter” within the larger history of Canadian Theatre.

 

To this end, we have begun the process of gathering and assembling various accounts of personal and artistic growth from artists whose participation in the Lab has significantly impacted the direction and evolution of the DLN, as we curate an archive that will live as part of the permanent digital collection on the Gatherings: Oral and Archival Histories of Performance website.

 

Gatherings: Oral and Archival Histories of Performance is a SSHRC-funded project, headed by Principle Investigator Dr. Stephen Johnson (Professor, Emeritus, University of Toronto). IT is peopled by scholars and educators in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, performing artists and key individuals who shape and run arts institutions across Canada. The primary objective of Gatherings is to collect stories from the storytellers whose narratives have helped to shape this nation-state and direct the attitudes and life ways of their witnesses. The aim of Gatherings and its co-investigators is to curate the conditions in which Canadian artists make meaning of their life. In this, we view ourselves as helpers in the project of legacy-building.